same Author who made the elements to minister to the material functions, and the arrangements of the world to occupy the individual and social affections of his living

creatures.

This principle of conscience, it may further be observed, does not stand upon the same level as the other impulses of our constitution by which we are prompted or restrained. By its very nature and essence, it possesses a supremacy over all others. "Your obligation to obey this law is its being the law of your nature. That your conscience approves of and attests such a course of action is itself alone an obligation. Conscience does not only offer itself to show us the way we should walk in, but it likewise carries its own authority with it, that it is our natural guide; the guide as signed us by the author of our nature. * That we ought to do an action, is of itself a sufficient and ultimate answer to the questions, why we should do it ?-how we are obliged to do it? The conviction of duty implies the soundest reason, the strongest obligation, of which our nature is susceptible.

We appear then to be using only language which is well capable of being justified, when we speak of this irresistible esteem for what is right, this conviction of a rule of action extending beyond the gratification of our irreflective im pulses, as an impress stamped upon the human mind by the Deity himself; a trace of His nature; an indication of His will; an announcement of His purpose; a promise of His favour, and though this faculty may need to be confirmed and unfolded, instructed and assisted by other aids, it still seems to contain in itself a sufficient intimation that the highest objects of man's existence are to be attained, by means of a direct and intimate reference of his thoughts and actions to the Divine Author of his being.

Such then is the Deity to which the researches of Na tural Theology point; and so far is the train of reflections in which we have engaged, from being merely speculative and barren. With the material world we cannot stop. If a su perior Intelligence have ordered and adjusted the succession of seasons and the structure of the plants of the field, we must allow far more than this at first sight would seem to

Butler, Serm. 3.

imply. We must admit still greater powers, still higher wisdom for the creation of the beasts of the forest with their faculties; and higher wisdom still and more transcendant attributes, for the creation of man. And when we reach this point, we find that it is not knowledge only, not power only, not foresight and beneficence alone, which we must attribute to the Maker of the World; but that we must consider him as the Author, in us, of a reverence for moral purity and rectitude; and, if the author of such emotions in us, how can we conceive of Him otherwise, than that these qualities are parts of his nature; and that he is not only wise and great and good, incomparably beyond our highest conceptions, but also conformed in his purposes to the rule which he thus impresses upon us, that is, Holy in the highest degree which we can imagine to ourselves as possible.

CHAPTER II.

On the vastness of the Universe.

I. THE aspect of the world, even without any of the pe culiar lights which science throws upon it, is fitted to give us an idea of the greatness of the power by which it is directed and governed, far exceeding any notions of power and greatness which are suggested by any other contemplation. The number of human beings who surround us-the various conditions requisite for their life, nutrition, well being, all fulfilled; the way in which these conditions are modified, as we pass in thought to other countries, by climate, temperament, habit;-the vast amount of the human popu lation of the globe thus made up; yet man himself but one among almost endless tribes of animals; the forest, the field, the desert, the air, the ocean, all teeming with creatures whose bodily wants are as carefully provided for as his ;-the sun, the clouds, the winds, all attending, as it were, on these organized beings;-a host of beneficent energies, unwearied by time and succession, pervading every corner of the earth;-this spectacle cannot but give the con

templator a lofty and magnificent conception of the Author of so vast a work, of the Ruler of so wide and rich an empire, of the Provider for so many and varied wants, the Director and Adjuster of such complex and jarring interests.

But when we take a more exact view of this spectacle, and aid our vision by the discoveries which have been made of the structure and extent of the universe, the impression is incalculably increased.

The number and variety of animals, the exquisite skill displayed in their structure, the comprehensive and profound relations by which they are connected, far exceed any thing which we could in any degree have imagined. But the view of the universe expands also on another side. The earth, the globular body thus covered with life, is not the only globe in the universe. There are, circling about our own sun, six others, so far as we can judge, perfectly analogous in their nature: besides our moon and other bodies analogous to it. No one can resist the temptation to conjecture, that these globes, some of them much larger than our own, are not dead and barren;-that they are, like ours, occupied with organization, life, intelligence. To conjecture is all that we can do, yet even by the perception of such a possibility, our view of the kingdom of nature is enlarged and elevated. The outermost of the planetary globes of which we have spoken is so far from the sun, that the cen tral luminary must appear to the inhabitants of that planet, if any there are, no larger than Venus does to us; and the length of their year will be eighty-two of ours.

But astronomy carries us still onwards. It teaches us that, with the exception of the planets already mentioned, the stars which we see have no immediate relation to our system. The obvious supposition that they are of the nature and order of our sun: the minuteness of their apparent magnitude agrees, on this supposition, with the enormous and almost inconceivable distance which, from all the measurements of astronomers, we are led to attribute to them. If then these are suns, they may, like our sun, have planets revolving round them; and these may, like our planet, be the seats of vegetable and animal and rational life:-we may thus have in the universe worlds, no one knows how many, no one can guess how varied:-but however many, how

ever varied, they are still but so many provinces in the same empire, subject to common rules, governed by a common power.

But the stars which we see with the naked eye are but a very small portion of those which the telescope unveils to us. The most imperfect telescope will discover some that are invisible without it; the very best instrument, perhaps does not show us the most remote. The number which crowds some parts of the heavens is truly marvellous. Dr. Herschel calculated that a portion of the milky way, about ten degrees long and two and a half broad, contained two hundred and fifty-eight thousand. In a sky so occupied, the moon would eclipse two thousand of such stars at once.

We learn too from the telescope that even in this province the variety of nature is not exhausted. Not only do the stars differ in colour and appearance, but some of them grow periodically fainter and brighter, as if they were dark on one side, and revolved on their axes. In other cases two stars appear close to each other, and in some of these cases it has been clearly established, that the two have a motion of revolution about each other; thus exhibiting an arrangement before unguessed, and giving rise possibly, to new conditions of worlds. In other instances, again, the telescope shows, not luminous points, but extended masses of dilute light, like bright clouds, hence called nebula. Some have supposed (as we have noticed in the last book) that such nebula by further condensation might become suns; but for such opinions we have nothing but conjecture. Some stars again have undergone permanent changes, or have absolutely disappeared, as the celebrated star of 1572, in the constellation Cassiopea.

If we take the whole range of created objects in our own system, from the sun down to the smallest animacule, and suppose such a system, or something in some way analogous to it, to be repeated for each of the millions of stars thus revealed to us, we have a representation of the material part of the universe, according to a view which many minds receive as a probable one; and referring this aggregate of systems to the Author of the universe, as in our own system we have found ourselves led to do, we have thus an estimate of the extent to which his creative energy

would thus appear to have been exercised in the material world.

If we consider further the endless and admirable contrivances and adaptations which philosophers and observers have discovered in every portion of our own system, every new step of our knowledge showing us something new in this respect; and if we combine this consideration with the thought how small a portion of the universe our knowledge includes, we shall, without being able at all to discern the extent of the skill and wisdom thus displayed, see something of the character of the design, and of the copiousness and ampleness of the means which the scheme of the world exhibits. And when we see that the tendency of all the arrangements which we can comprehend is to support the existence, to develope the faculties, to promote the well being of these countless species of creatures; we shall have some impression of the beneficence and love of the Creator, as manifested in the physical government of his creation.

2. It is extremely difficult to devise any means of bringing before a common apprehension the scale on which the universe is constructed, the enormous proportion which the larger dimensions bear to the smaller, and the amazing number of steps from large to smaller, or from small to larger, which the consideration of it offers. The following comparative representations may serve to give the reader to whom the subject is new some idea of these steps.

If we suppose the earth to be represented by a globe a foot in diameter, the distance of the sun from the earth will be about two miles; the diameter of the sun, on the same supposition, will be something above one hundred feet, and consequently his bulk such as might be made up of two hemispheres, each about the size of the dome of St. Paul's. The moon will be thirty feet from us, and her diameter three inches, about that of a cricket ball. Thus the sun would much more than occupy all the space within the moon's orbit. On the same scale Jupiter would be above ten miles from the sun, and Uranus forty. We see then how thinly scattered through space are the heavenly bodies. The fixed stars would be at an unknown distance, but, probably, if all distances were thus diminished, no star would